Flight Delays, Cancellations Will Happen, So Keep Your Cool And Prepare A Strategy

August 08, 2013

Earlier this month, I headed to California for a family vacation. We had a great time — so much so that throughout the stay, I posted pictures of us on the beach and at area attractions — all with the caption, “Making Memories in San Diego.”

The trip home also fell into the “Making Memories” category — but not in a good way. What was to have been a seven-hour Southwest flight, (San Diego-Denver-Hartford), turned into a 36-hour nightmare that included four states, four time zones and an unexpected overnight stay in Albuquerque.

Starting out the flight from San Diego to Denver was delayed, which meant we couldn’t make our connecting flight in Denver for the final leg to Hartford. We then asked the ticket agent our options for getting home.

“Not many,” he replied. “You can wait to see if the Denver flight goes out, take that and get stuck in Denver. You can stay in San Diego and we’ll try and get you out tomorrow. Or we can send you someplace else. What airport floor do you want to spend the night on?”

Suddenly we were on the Edward Snowdon travel plan.

There’s nothing unusual about travel glitches and in the scheme of things, ours were pretty tame. Everyone’s got stories about delayed flights, cancelled trips, long lines and lost luggage.

Travel writer Doug Lansky heard so many that he gathered them into a book titled: “The Titanic Awards: Celebrating the Worst of Travel.” The collection, and accompanying website, www.titanicawards.com, includes hundreds of stories of how things can go wrong when people hit the road.

“It would be great if trips were hassle-free, but if you travel, you’re going to hit bumps along the way,” says Lansky. “People can have unrealistic expectations when their trips are not perfect. When your trip goes off the tracks, take a step back and breathe. Things are going to get worked out eventually.”

In other words, how you handle travel nightmares can make the difference between a dream vacation and the trip from hell. For starters, yelling at counter staff doesn’t help. In the case of delayed or cancelled flights, ask about seats on other airlines, hotel vouchers and compensation for your problems. If lines are too long at the counters, call the airline’s 800 number. If you’re not happy with the resolution offered, ask to speak with a supervisor.

We tried all of those suggestions with little success. Depending on who we were talking to, the reasons given for our mix-up were mechanical problems or no plane or no pilot or bad weather or air comptroller issues or ground-delays, none of which, it seemed, warranted hotel accommodations, travel vouchers or even coupons for bad airport food.

After waiting hours, we were told that our new itinerary was San Diego-Albuquerque and, on the following day, Baltimore-Hartford. When we landed in Albuquerque, the agent there asked, “Why on earth did they send you here?”

Good question. She re-booked our flights for the next day and wished us luck. Turned out, we were going to need it. Later that evening, we realized she’d scheduled us for a 1:15 p.m. flight out of Albuquerque connecting with a 1:35 p.m. flight out of Baltimore. Unless we were taking the space shuttle, that wasn’t going to work. We called the Southwest 800 number and tried to explain the situation.

“I’ve never seen such a mess and I can’t fix it,” said the call center agent, after checking our records. “You’ll have to straighten it out in person tomorrow.”

We headed off to our hotel and collapsed. (During the ordeal, I’d been posting status updates on Facebook. A friend who lives in New Mexico saw them, messaged me and offered to book us a room in Albuquerque at his corporate rate. We took him up on his offer and stayed at the beautiful Hotel Andaluz, rather than at an economy motel.)

When we returned to the airport at 11 a.m. the next morning, we were told we’d actually been scheduled for a 6:15 a.m. flight, which we’d missed. When we produced our boarding passes for the 1:15 p.m. flight, the agent shook her head.

“Not sure what I can do with this,” she said. “You might have to travel stand-by or wait until tomorrow.”

Eventually, (we’re still not sure how), the agent straigntened things out, got us on the 1:15 flight with a 7:55 p.m. connection in Baltimore. At 11 p.m., we finally arrived home.

The day after we got back, I contacted Southwest with the saga of our misadventures. The website, www.southwest.com, has a form where customers can submit complaints. (If you can’t fit all the details on one email form, do as many as it takes.) They’ve also got a special customer service number, 214-932-0333.